Thursday February 27, 2025 Guerneville CA.
Road work
The locals have the old road pretty torn up in some spots, so today, I went up there to see about fixing things up a bit, mostly hauling rock to the wet messy parts where they cause water to run down the steep parts of the road, mostly from making tire ruts in the road. They just drive in the same old rut with their tires which causes water to run down the road and make wet spots. I’ve asked them to drive all over the road, but it just doesn’t seem to get through to them, so they mess the road up and make it worse for themselves, which makes more work for me to try to keep it open for them.
Anyway, I rode on up through the state park to where Skiddy was parked and started it up to warm it up a bit.
I hauled rock to the soft spots pretty much all day.
I had to stop here to throw some pieces of redwood wood off the road as it’s hard to make things smooth other wise.
I threw these chucks of redwood wood off the road then smoothed the road out.
At the end of the day, I parked next to Skiddy and filled up the it’s fuel tank with diesel.
It’s nice to have an electric pump to help transfer the fuel, otherwise it would be a real pain to hold up those slow emptying fuel containers.
On the way down the road, I stopped here to fix this ditch to stop water from going down the road. The water is coming from small springs along the road.
I went on home from there.
Nice day.
They might drive in the ruts because they’re afraid they’re going to get stuck in the mud. Probably depends on what kind of dirt you’ve got, but the roads I drove over when I lived in the boonies required driving in the ruts or you would end up making one big mess, one way or another. (Learned the hard way.) So maybe they’re going on past experience which doesn’t apply to the current conditions. I was paying people to come work on the road so believe me, I was interested in driving in a way that didn’t make a mess. Paying for it is why I said a while back that I wished you’d been my neighbor.
Some of the problem is they are afraid to get stuck or slide off the road, but they do it even when the road is good, which makes the road go bad when the water runs down it. This road was so bad from bad maintenance that the park guys wouldn’t let them fix it anymore as they were making it so bad it was washing sediments down into the park and clear into Guerneville. And the truth is, not many people really know how to build a road in this kind of steep mountains with all the springs popping out when it rain. It was so bad fire trucks wouldn’t go up it, nor any other large truck for that matter. Paying someone to fix it wouldn’t of worked out as when you pay someone to fix stuff, the are in and out and gone and what they did usually just washes out, even more. My goal is to get it so fire trucks can go up it and to stop the sediment from washing down the hill. I thought I could fix it in a couple weeks, but with the heavy rains this year, I’ve been working on it since Christmas. I do get a lot of thank you’s now that they see what I can do. I’ll likely be working on it on and off for the next year or so to get it right.
Bob
Ah. So even when it’s not muddy…Well, you’ve had your work cut out for you. I would imagine those roads are not easy to fix right. Even on our simple one, the neighbor who finally took over would sort of make the slopes a funnel that just led to the lowest part of the road. You’ve got a lot of slopes, turns, etc., not to mention those springs!
Hi Judith,
This road is a very complicated one that was a real mess from people that didn’t know what they were doing while working on it through the years. Most of them have died now. I learned how to make and fix roads in this area from working on them through the years while living in the forest. I speciallize in out-sloping roads and doing things low cost. Most others spend lots of money and don’t get it right, so the roads they work on fall apart and make an even bigger mess of things. Most of the people that use the road that live back in the woods were agaist me fixing it up, at first. I had to show them what I could do and now they are all smiles as even with the wet problems caused by the heavy rains, the road is in it’s best shape, ever.
Bob
Quit fixing the road for a while and see what happens. Doesn’t look like any of them are doing much maintenance work. Once they find out how much it costs to get a skid steer and a bunch of rock in there, bet they come around a little. Kudos to you for all the work you have done so far
Hi Kenny,
The road got pretty messed up after the last rain and I have to wait a bit for some dry days, before repairing it, so the road got pretty bad, so they know. Most of the people are a bit on the old side and don’t seem to understand whats going on and have no idea how to work on the road. And when they do work on it as one guys does, he just makes things even worse. I had to have a friendly talk with him when I started, so at least now, he leaves it alone so I can make some progress.
Bob